15-year-old Student Says Teacher Invited Him To Bed

December 18, 1992|By RONNIE CROCKER Daily Press

NEWPORT NEWS — The boy described his former English teacher as an obsessive older woman who showered him with attention, invited him into her bed and later lied to him about being pregnant and having a venereal disease.

She responded that the dark-haired youth was a talented, but haunted, young poet whose seemingly innocent schoolboy crush turned violent one afternoon in the upstairs bedroom of her rented townhouse.

For nearly five hours Thursday in Circuit Court, the 15-year-old former Gildersleeve Middle School student and the 42-year-old ex-teacher traded charges and countercharges. Their testimony highlighted the opening day of Darlene Dudley's sex trial.

Dudley faces up to 20 years in prison if found guilty of two counts of having consensual sex with the youth, who was 14 at the time. She said she passed up a chance to plead guilty in exchange for a probated sentence because she wants to clear her name.

The boy had trouble on the witness stand Thursday remembering exact dates, sequences of events and other details about the affair he claims to have had with Dudley last fall and the ensuing falling out that led to his public accusations in April.

At first, he said, he enjoyed the attention from his teacher. She ate lunch with him in the cafeteria, visited him at home when he wasn't feeling well and took him to a concert. He said their sexual relationship started sometime in October, with an afternoon tryst following a walk in the park and a trip to a Farm Fresh for condoms.

By the end of the year, however, the relationship was starting to cool. The boy's mother, though fond of Dudley and grateful for the help she had given her son, said Thursday she grew tired of the woman's lengthy visits and telephone calls.

One night in October during one of Dudley's visits, the teacher and the boy's father got into a screaming match because Dudley felt he was berating his son too much over a poor math grade. She got angry again, witnesses said, when the boy's parents refused to let Dudley take the boy to New York for a Thanksgiving visit.

Witnesses testified that at Christmas, Dudley gave the boy a number of gifts, including a solid gold Star of David necklace. The boy gave her a gerbil and a poem in which he referred to himself as a ``lucky boy in an awful world.''

A few days later, she returned the gerbil, which was sick and losing its hair and tail. She informed the boy that she would be taking a leave of absence in January to try to sort out a variety of personal problems.

The boy testified that when Dudley returned to school in February, she told him that she was pregnant and he was the father. A week or so later, he said, she told him the baby had been born dead. And a couple of weeks after that, he said, she told him she had lied about it all.

The boy said he and Dudley had sex 20 to 25 times during the last three months of 1991, but only once after that. He said that in late February or early March, Dudley asked him to her apartment for sex and bet him $50 that he could not say anything bad to her afterward because he loved her too much.

He testified that he won the bet by telling the woman after intercourse that he didn't like her and that she needed professional help. He said he spent the $50 on a trip to Williamsburg with his sister. On the way, he admitted to his sister that he and Dudley had been having sex.

He said Dudley had also falsely told him that she was infected with herpes. He said he later tested negative for the treatable, but incurable, venereal disease.

He said his sister persuaded him to tell someone else. On March 19, he went to Gildersleeve Principal Mae Dean Northam and complained that Dudley was harassing him and his family with telephone calls and unwanted flowers and cards.

Dudley was suspended March 23. On April 11, she sent the boy a $100 bill tucked inside a card that contained the slogan, ``Don't try to do anything that would embarrass me.'' She claimed the money was from a magazine that had published a poem written by the boy, but she could not recall which magazine.

When Dudley took the stand, she acknowledged taking a keen interest in the child and spending a lot of time with him. She said she worried that the boy was being abused at home. She said she gave the boy $50 in case he wanted to run away.

She denied repeatedly that she ever agreed to have sex with him. But on March 9, she said, the boy walked into her room while she was sitting on the bed, half-dressed, trying to decide what to wear. He walked over and raped her, she said, while taunting her with comments about how he hated her and the perfume she wore.

When the attack was over, she said, the boy said, ``Thanks,'' and sat down to watch her dress. She recalled her only response: